Enjoy yourself as much as you like, if only you keep from sin.
St. John Bosco

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Clutter Conquest

Clutter is my nemesis. I have never, in all my life, (and I am 48!) been able to conquer it. So instead I go through periods of grim realism where I simply ignore the piles of junk looming around me knowing that nothing, nothing I do will ever take care of the problem. Then I go through periods of optimism where I get busy trying to wittle down those piles. I never do it all the way and the minute I turn my back, the piles grow again at a seemingly amazing rate.

Right now I am experiencing optimism on the household front. So I think I'm going to record here what I do each day to declutter, from now until the weekend after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving weekend is a big clothes giveaway around here because our church has an annual clothing drive and I always unload bags and bags of clothes there.

Today: I went into Becky's room and cleaned out the eastern side of her room. I didn't get rid of every bit of clutter but most of it got either thrown away in a trashbag or put into a too-small-to-be-adequate-Amazon-book-box. The junk that was left was put into shoeboxes and tucked into her bookcase. I also cleaned off her bedside table. The table itself has been so defaced by markers etc that it really needs sanding and repainting but for now, I just got rid of lots of stuff of trash (including broken glass????) and stacked the cds in a neat but tall pile. I still need to deal with the Amazon box but must do that later. I did get the trashbag out to the trash though. That's a good thing as I've been known to begin to declutter only to find a couple weeks later that I gave up midway and left the trashbag just sitting in the room for weeks.

10th Grade - Catholic Life Community, A Beka Biology, Saxon Algebra II and Jacobs Geometry, New First Steps in Latin/Lingua Latina, The History of the Church, St. Augustine's Confessions, Augustine Came to Kent, William the Conqueror by Belloc, Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot, St. Francis of Assisi by Chesterton, The Quiet Light by de Wohl, Dante's Inferno, Joan of Arc by Mark Twain, Lepanto by Chesterton, Hamlet by Shakespeare

A Brief Introduction

My husband, Rick and I have been married for almost 22 years. We are Catholic (well, Rick is Jewish!) and love living the homeschooling lifestyle. The kids have all been diagnosed with LDs when it comes to reading and writing. These turned out to simply mean we bloom a little later than other kids do in these subjects. No big deal. But I am a big fan of vision therapy as it has helped my kids so much!

We've been pretty relaxed these past few years, most relaxed in the youngest years and gradually getting more formal as we enter high school and design our own college prep plans. This year we are starting out more formal for 6th grade. My son has expressed a desire to go to school next year in 7th grade. So to help prepare him for that he wanted to to enroll in Kolbe's homeschool program to get used to taking tests, writing more and keeping a tighter schedule. The 4th grader is following suit, just because they are used to doing much the same thing each day.

My 15 yo wants to go to college and is interested in the fields of economics, business and finance, computers and game design.

I have graduated two children from homeschool already! My oldest daughter, 19, is starting her second year at the University of Dallas, majoring in Politics. My oldest son, 18, plans to study and take CLEP tests using CollegePlus, find a parttime job, and practice and prepare for his winter audition for a music conservatory. He aspires to be a composer and performer.

So we are down to homeschooling three kids this year, 2010-2011 - a 10th grader, a 6th grader and a 3rd/4th grader. This will be our 14th year of homeschooling!